The law of the mind modifies the law of leadership. Being first in the mind is everything in marketing. … Marketing is a battle of perception, not product, so the mind takes precedence over the marketplace. – According to google search first results… 🙂
In other words…. Marketing is all about building trust in customers and audience. A good marketer is one who has good communication and conversation skills. One must talk to customers like we talk to our friends. It builds trust in them.
If we cannot converse well in 1:1,then we can never do with 1: Many .
We must be Authentic to converse better . Being authentic means to real and talk facts , people dont like long talks or fake buildups . One must always accept his/her own flaws and negatives of life and be ok with them . No one is perfect ,everyone has rough edges . If you admit them, people connect easily.
Personally, I have been always curious to find a simple yet effective understanding of marketing, how it works, the thought process that goes into it and how to effectively plan your own marketing strategies.
According To Me… Who is a Better Marketer ?
Being a better marketer is all about connecting different things with one, person who has more life experience than just having college education or by reading marketing related books or just completing online or offline courses. One must travel more often , do new things , always meet new people ,learn their type of minds , demands of products . one must learn new languages always. Languages break big barrier for marketers , he can reach more people with more effective mode .
Try doing new things in life everyday . We often hesitate doing new things in thinking of consequences ,but to gain life experience we must not hesitate doing new things . One must be open minded and flexible to be good marketer . Never stick to one thing or belief strongly ,it wont allow you to grow as marketer or even as a person.
In Other words…. “Generating curiosity, interest, among your target audience and finally leading to a sale of your product or service, ideally should be the ultimate go to resource which helps solve a specific set of problems faced by them, allowing them to grow above their limitations thereby creating a lasting impression in the mindset of your customers.”
Hmmmm. enough reading intro… lets jump into the facts/topics about marketing…
THINGS TO KNOW, LEARN AND UNDERSTAND MARKETING BETTER
Few things that you need to understand to better your marketing strategies.
- Law of Marketing
- Why build a strong brand.
- Niche Specifications & Sub-categories
- Why learning & Mastering Marketing is Important
- What is Communication in Marketing
- Marketing Decisions based on Economics
- More on Indian economics
- Key Differences between Traditional and Digital Marketing
- What is Direct Response Marketing
- CATT Marketing Funnel Framework
- Niche Selection
- Integrated Digital Marketing
- Power of Personal Branding
- How do you evolve as a brand?
- How does your content evolve?
- Mass Trust
We all have read about marketing in a broader sense. But this kind of deep level understanding which encourages to take action about your brand is something I have not seen much online or elsewhere.
If you are still reading this, surely you want to dive in a little deeper by reading about those concepts. I will help you out by making a brief but through meaning of these concepts.
Just read along and I can assure you will be fascinated and impact your own decision-making skills.
LAW OF MARKETING
Marketing is more of science based approach which begins with understanding the customer, what problems they face or what their needs are and then creating a product or service which satisfies not just their needs but also capture their mindset in becoming the final solution to their problems or needs.
It is all about approaching the right customer at the right time with the right message.
Marketing means not just selling but keep customers happy and satisfied and develop trust. Advertisement, sales, and copywriting are parts of marketing.
Marketing is not more important that the product because a good genuine product will always have good reviews and will sell itself through word of mouth from existing customers who become brand ambassadors for your product which is the best way to market.
Few definitions of marketing on the internet.
“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”
Source : https://www.ama.org/the-definition-of-marketing-what-is-marketing/
“Marketing is the process of interesting potential customers and clients in your products and/or services. The key word in this marketing definition is “process”; marketing involves researching, promoting selling, and distributing your products or services.”
Source : https://www.thebalancesmb.com/marketing-in-business-2948349
“Marketing is the process of interesting potential customers and clients in your products and/or services. The key word in this marketing definition is “process”; marketing involves researching, promoting selling, and distributing your products or services.”
Source : https://www.thebalancesmb.com/marketing-in-business-2948349
and many more…
WHY BUILD A STRONG BRAND
What is the most common example that comes to your mind when you hear Operating Systems in computers? obvisouly its Apple isn’t it?
Disclaimar: image of Apple used for reference sake
Who are amongst leading shoe brand in the world?
Disclaimar: image of Nike used for reference sake
More examples like above can be think off…
All these brands have become pioneers in their respective domains. That is because they focused on one category or niche where they really have excelled at or have great experience and strategies capturing people’s mindset.
If you would like to think about a great future, we should choose a niche or a sub-category within a niche so that we could learn, practice, teach and focus on it to be successful.The idea is to become the only known one in the market and be remembered for that.
In a competitive market, we can always choose a sub niche and better at it. In my case I would like to focus on technical recruitments and permanent placements.
People always remember only the top player or at max the second-best player in the market. Hope this clears out why build a strong brand is a necessity.
WHY LEARN AND MASTER MARKETING
Marketing is an age-old means of promoting and selling products or services. If you want to generate leads or make sales, you need to be visible to your potential customers.
This is exactly why there are marketplace at known junctions since ancient civilizations.
Educating yourself in marketing is a wonderful way to learn a skill which is going to be a never-ending process but the one which will also help you generate sales directly. Thus, it an investment as well.
This will always be in demand as this is a direct revenue generator unlike other processes like finance, Human resources etc.,
If you are the founder of your own company, you should have good marketing skills, create strategies, and not completely outsource your marketing to an agency. If you have good marketing techniques, you will be able to have sales and hence your business or job will be much safer than others.
IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNICATION
When you have good marketing skills it literally means you are communicating well with your customers. Manipulating marketing might work for short duration but it will either take your business down or spoil your brand reputation.
Speaking in English fluently is a good skill but unless your words do not create a meaning or purpose to your customers, does not matter how good or bad your grammar is.
The Idea of communication in marketing is how well we share our thoughts into words and reach out to your audience for maximum results.
Tips to improve communication: You can start writing as if you are talking to someone, join a conversation and understand what people need. Watch shows in English and Sitcoms. Think in English.
MARKETING DECISIONS BASED ON ECONOMICS
The main purpose of knowing and reading about economics is to help you make proper strategies and decision based on the respective country or related domain.
If the average age keeps increasing, the economy of that country goes up because more people will have ability to start earning and simultaneously spend as well. In case of developed countries higher average age means very less expenses.
We need to target developing countries that is where the economy majorly keeps growing.
Debt creates money. If you take a loan and invest or save it through a bank, it would possibly be further invested elsewhere and hence money circulates in an economy. However, if people clear their loans and do not spend or take further loans it creates a cash crunch and economy falls.
The more debt, the more cash flow in the economy (inflation).
The governing banks entices people to take loans by giving less interest rates which in turn circulates money, to manage and run the economy especially during recession period.
Also, only the best brands endure recession and weak ones are out of the market. Hence, we should have solid knowledge and understanding of economy to help us create better marketing strategies to sustain as a brand.
MORE ON INDIAN ECONOMY
If your product or service is for Indian economy, we should have a good understanding and data driven segregation of the people in the economy who can potentially afford your product or service and hence generate leads and convert them to sales using their power of purchasing.
Basically, people who come from well to do families (those who can afford more than their needs for survival and earn decently well), have an average of 5 lacs per annum in salary, have good education, can speak good English and those who have access to credit / debit cards, a laptop/ desktop, internet and mobile phones become our target audience. These people are majorly from Tier 1 Cities.
This part of the Indian economy is compared with Mexican GDP.
Also, there is another segment of the Indian economy, with lesser income around 2 lacs, who serve the Upper segment. Although, they do have phones and internet but cannot consume our content especially in English language. They could be from tier 1 cities as well. However, they majorly depend on local language to communicate.
This second segment of the Indian economy is compared with Philippines GDP.
The third part of the Indian economy is where 88% workforce segregates, whose average income might be around 70,000 Rs per year. Mostly from Villages, tier 3 cities.
This segment Is compared with Sub Sahara excluding South African GDP.
The reason we are segregating the country’s economy is because the target segment is more important for any start-up because they can only have the purchasing power.
Once, we have enough profits from first segment we can then share or move some profits to serve other segments.
The wealth concentration is more on segment 1 who can afford to spend on our product or service. These target customers comprise about 30 to 50 million users by the end of year 2025.
KEY DIFFERENCES BETWEEN TRADITIONAL AND DIGITAL MARKETING
A product which is generic can be well promoted on Televisions, billboards etc., where Tv itself has a reach of 800 to 1 billion audience which is far above and way beyond the reach of digital marketing audience.
Digital marketing is well targeted for an English-speaking audience of about 100 million users.
For generic products or services, we can also advertise on Radio, Newspapers as well.
The main disadvantage of traditional marketing is we cannot personalize content, natural sales and cannot do deep marketing.
WHAT IS DIRECT RESPONSE MARKETING
Most of the traditional marketing ads cannot measure their ad conversion. Tracking is highly impossible like in TV, Billboards etc.,
Increase in brand awareness is not measurable.
What is direct response marketing?
“Direct response marketing is a type of sales technique designed to evoke an on-the-spot response and encourage a prospective customer to take action by opting in the advertiser’s offer. Unlike other marketing types, the direct response requires little or no time waiting to see measurable results.”
Digital marketing is extremely useful for start-ups and hence we need to use direct response marketing.
When we see “call to action” like in Tv ads, Newspapers where contact details are displayed or where we see a website asking us to call or message for more details, even those come under direct response marketing.
CATT MARKETING FUNNEL
Here we refer ‘n’ as the niche we choose based on which our success and wealth is created. We need to focus on a niche where people need real help for us to solve a problem. Instead of focusing on multiple niches we need to narrow down to one and continue working and developing in that niche.
By CATT we refer them as CONTENT, ATTENTION, TRUST and TRANSACTION.
Once niche is selected, We need to post valuable content on blogs, social media pages, share value driven videos, conduct webinars, and educate people about our niche to attract leads. Here our content is our Asset.
Furthermore, we need to drive traffic to our content through search engines optimizations, search engine marketing, paid ads, referrals, etc., to generate more attention.
We need to build a trust using methods of trip wire, automations, retargeting, and deep marketing.
Finally, we can conduct transactions by converting leads into customer with sales call, sales webinars, video sales etc.,
Then comes….
NICHE SELECTION
Your niche should be a mixture of your talent or good experience with passion and should also have a market to promote. Without these, there is high possibility we might be exhausted or someone else might be better at it who would capture our market.
A good niche is a small niche market within an industry, where it is fairly easy to start a new site or business.
In addition to a fairly low barrier to entry (no barrier often means it’s crowded), it must also be possible to monetize the niche. Public affiliate programs with a wide selection of products are always a good sign.
A good niche also needs to be an area where you can differentiate yourself from major competitors (like industry magazines) by focusing on a small section, or a unique target audience.
A few examples:
- Japanese gardening
- Weight loss for retirees
- Career advice for veterans
Of course, the best choice for you depends on your experience and skillset…
INTEGRATED DIGITAL MARKETING FRAMEWORK
Our marketing strategy should involve all the combination like social media posts, search engine optimization, paid ads, email marketing and not just use one aspect and expect sales to happen. This is where all the execution of our marketing happens.
Have you ever wondered why McDonald’s are constantly advertising? Everyone knows who McDonald’s are. Everyone knows what McDonald’s offer and there is one on every street corner. So why do they advertise? Because there is power in reminding consumers about your brand, even if they already know that it exists.
Of course, they may also want to change the perception of its values and what it offers, in these instances an integrated marketing campaign honing-in on the key messages across all channels is absolutely vital. This is why consistent messaging across channels is so critical. Without it, your message will fail to make an impact and you will just be yelling into a gale. 🙂
More about this will be explained in future posts…
POWER OF PERSONAL BRANDING
The one who is best known will always overcome even the best in the market. The best way to market our brand is to promote through people who use our product or service and give good genuine reviews. Interested potential customers will value a users opinion more than the brand.
For example, Mr. Tatas who is so down to earth nature and humble response towards people, is also a well-known personality whose name is sufficient for investors to think about investing in his companies.
However, the only drawback is you cannot sell your own name. But can run your multiple companies under your name.
A personal brand is ultimately the influencer and ambassador for the companies they run.
EVOLUTION OF A PERSONAL BRAND and How does your content evolve?
The journey of our personal brand will begin with learning a new skill and understanding the concepts, study and remember facts and practice proper procedures.
We need to put the skills we learnt into our work or freelancing where we implement what we practiced because this how we would have a clear understanding of the learnings so far.
We will put these learnings and experiences into our blogs because when we write we will have a clarity; this is where we start building our personal brand. Our work experiences will make our case study and it gives value to the readers.
Once we achieved this brand of ours, with our learnings, practices, and implementations in our background we can consult others for their marketing needs.
Using this, we can mentor others who wants to achieve similar path and help them grow above their current level which will in-turn give us much higher understanding
The understanding of the market, the concerns people face and with our skills developed, we can give rise to our start-up.
Mass Trust
Last… but not the least. a picture is worth a thousand words so below is what we call a mass trust blueprint from Digital Deepak.
There is no conclusion for anything but to brief you about what second session was all about , it made clear my understanding of marketing and how can i be a better marketer , how to know my audience and how to target audience , creating a customer avatar and building the audience . How to learn , importance of learning , breaking limitations in life to learn better, the approach that we should have starting from selecting our niche, content marketing and creating products or services based on economics, what frameworks to bank on, like the CATT funnel and mass trust blue print giving rise to our very own brand.
Thank you for your valuable time by reading this.
What do you think? Did you find it interesting? If Yes, give a like and Let me know by sharing your comments.
***this is part of Digital Deepak Internship Program. 🙂
@rm@te The Tester 